The fortress was the mountain, the mountain the fortress. Only with the greatest effort could Chel spot where one ended and the other began. The construction squatted in the pass, filling it, choking it like a boulder, the monstrous gatehouse at its centre a consuming maw. Humanity thronged before it, a torrent of people funnelled by the pass into its jaws, shuffling slow and fearful. From the tiered ramparts above, rank after rank of impassive archers gazed down, armour glittering in the fierce sun.
‘I thought this place was supposed to sit on a gorge. Where’s the gorge?’ Chel squinted against the glare, peering beyond those ahead at the rugged structure rising over them.
‘Arowan sits on the gorge, my friend. This is Korowan. Gateway to the great beyond.’
Lemon leaned across. ‘They call it the Stop.’
‘In what sense?’
‘At a guess, all of them.’
Chel looked over the banked walls, the rising crenellated tiers. The colour of the stone varied, the style and ornamentation, even down to the decorative carvings. ‘Bit of a mixture, isn’t it? Who built it?’
Foss sniffed and rubbed at his nose. Pale road dust clogged the air, drifting in clouds from the thumping passage of the crowd. ‘The Sericans. Word is, any time it was breached, they’d rebuild it bigger, plug whatever the weakness was, and then some.’
‘How old is it?’
‘The oldest bit? Hundreds of years.’
‘And the newest? When was it last breached?’ Chel squinted up. Suddenly the massive structure seemed all the more imposing. Long, silken pennants snapped from a dozen mounts along its upper tiers.
‘Not in our lifetime, friend. Generations.’
‘Arowan itself? Did it ever fall?’
Loveless approached from the direction of the gatehouse, head low and hooded, keeping to the shaded part of the road. She’d slept in the cart for the early part of the morning, and seemed a little restored. In fact, she’d spent almost more time in the cart than out of it in their frenetic cross-country journey to the Serican border, joined by a rotating cast of whoever was struggling most with the brutal pace that Rennic had set: Tarfel, Kosh, and on one occasion, Lemon, although she blamed an underdone breakfast for that episode. Chel was as glad as any of them that their journey’s end was in sight – his legs and feet were almost as sore as his shoulder – but the knowledge that they were hunted kept any thought of relaxation at bay. They knew Corvel’s agents pursued them – several times they’d had to change their path at the last to avoid sure ambushes, and had more than once taken it in turns to haul the cart beside the mule to keep up their pace – but they’d at least skirted direct confrontation in their frantic journey. ‘Wake the prince,’ she said.
A moment later, a bleary Tarfel was beside them, descended from the wagon, dust-streaked and blinking. Momentary confusion was swiftly replaced with habitual anxiety. ‘Can we pass through? Our enemies are on our heels!’
‘They’ll see you. You’d better impress them.’
‘What are all these people waiting for? Why do they shamble like corpses?’ Tarfel looked up and down the road, at the dusty throng, the evenly spaced pairs of spearmen keeping idle watch on the shuffling crowd. Hawkers moved up and down the shifting line, crying their wares. The smoke from a handful of food stalls drifted over, mingling with the dust. Somewhere a group of pilgrims was singing, discordant and jarring over the sound of distant bird cries. Traffic was sparse in the other direction, barely a handful travelling south-east on the silk road.
‘Each is vetted at the gateway, highness,’ Foss said, maintaining a measure of deference in his speech that had long since fled that of the others. ‘Their means and motives assessed. It takes time. The Sericans are a careful people.’
‘They’re avaricious arseholes,’ Loveless replied. ‘With me, princeling. You too, cub.’
The slope steepened and the gloom of the fortress’s shadow enveloped them, then they entered the blissfully cool darkness of the gatehouse. Loveless, her hood kept low despite the relative cool and quiet beneath the first of the massive gates, gestured to one of the gild-armoured guards. He was taller than those around him, his armour finely wrought, his silken surcoat emblazoned with a shape of a winged shadow. He sported a long, droopy moustache, as did many of the other guards. In Korowan, moustaches were in.
‘The captain.’
Tarfel approached the man. ‘Captain! I am Tarfel Merimonsun—’
The guard stared at him blankly.
Loveless slid beside him, still hooded. She said something in a language that Chel didn’t recognize that seemed to feature a lot of long vowels, and she sounded fluent doing so.
‘Of course,’ Tarfel muttered. ‘Our imperial forebears never made it through the pass, did they? Are you announcing me?’
‘Your name carries little weight up here,’ she murmured, ‘but I’m doing what I can. We may be better off—’
He shook his head in irritation. ‘My name, dear girl, is all I have left. And if it carries no weight, we may as well turn around and march back to meet my brother’s minions. What, after all, is the point of me? What am I for? If I can’t command a modicum of respect, then our every effort is wasted.’
Loveless stared at the prince from beneath her hood, calculating. Those in the shadow of the gate were watching their hushed, if unintelligible, exchange: guards, clerks, traders, and pilgrims all. The tall guard with the long moustache gazed from one to the other, brow lowered, then waved a hand to a knot of his companions, his indulgence expired. The men began to approach, spears loose in their hands.
Loveless spoke, fast and clear, again in the language Chel took to be Serican, or whatever they called the tongue. The faint lilt of her accent slotted against her words, and he realized at last that she was a native. Whatever she said, the guards paused their advance, and as one their attention swung back to Tarfel.
‘I announced you, like you wanted. Now it’s your turn. Do something royally mag-fucking-nificent.’
‘Right,’ he said, looking flushed beneath his dust-coat. ‘Right.’
It was suddenly very quiet in the gloom beneath the gatehouse. The guards shifted in expectation, their mail jingling. Their gear really was of intimidating quality.
Tarfel introduced himself, trotting out his full name and titles as Loveless translated. He spoke with sudden, unexpected confidence, and brandished his signet with a flourish at the peak of his words. One of the guard captain’s eyebrows rose.
‘Under the terms of the treaty of Kelsuus,’ Tarfel said, ‘as a visiting head of state I request an audience with the Keeper, and the hospitality and protection of the city.’
Loveless translated. The guard captain’s other eyebrow rose. He spoke, and Loveless repeated his words.
‘Head of state? What head? What state?’
‘I am king-in-exile, disputing my brother’s claim to the throne of Vistirlar. As Arowan has no active alliance, under the terms of the treaty I must be recognized as a sovereign.’
The guard captain listened to the translation, then stood for a moment, tugging at the ends of his moustache. ‘Here. Wait.’ He muttered something to his men then walked away, into the darkness of the inner structure. Chel shuffled up to Tarfel and Loveless, flanked by the guards, and nodded in acknowledgement. Tarfel was maintaining his regal bearing, despite the obvious scepticism of those around them and his entirely un-regal appearance.
A liveried rider came galloping into the gatehouse from the road, flushed and dust-stained, dismounted and ran into the darkness after the guard captain. A moment later, a groom appeared and led the foaming horse away.
As they waited, Chel looked at the brutal yards-thick walls, the etching and carving around the second gateway, set off from the outer. Beyond, in the gathering gloom, he saw the flicker of torches marking the passageway to the third and final gate, and a sliver of light that might have been the open air on the far side. For a gatehouse, Korowan was enormous; for a fortress, it was dense, tightly packed, its sole aim to block the pass to the lands beyond. Three huge gates, portcullises and deployable blockades between them, arrow-slits and trenches overhead: any invading force would be shredded in its depths.
Chel felt some part of him unclench, wavering on the point of relaxation. Corvel’s agents could not follow. None could pass the Stop. As long as Tarfel could get them in.
The guard captain returned, one hand fidgeting with his moustache. He marched to Tarfel, stopped, then bowed. Chel let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
‘Come.’
‘Wait, my retinue. Loveless, tell him!’
‘Retinue? Are you—’
‘Tell him!’
She rattled off a translation, and the guard waved a hand in impatient acknowledgement. She turned to Chel. ‘Get the others. Fast.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘That rider was a messenger. Something’s happening. Go, now!’
By the time he returned, a long, upholstered wagon had appeared beneath the gate, drawn from some hidden stable and pulled by two fine-looking horses with ornate collars. Mutters from the queue of traffic behind them had turned to angry shouts, especially when they had pulled the cart onto the roadside and driven up the slope, kicking up ever more of the arid dust.
Loveless met them at the long wagon, her hood still pulled low. ‘Leave the cart, they’ll bring it. Get on board. Fast as you can.’ Tarfel was already seated on the wagon, on one of the two facing benches that ran along its length. Two of the guards sat beyond him, apathetic, their spears couched between their knees.
‘Aye, right, what kind of wagon is this then?’
‘Troop transport. Ferrying bodies to and from the city.’
‘And they’ll be bringing our gear, will they?’
‘Get a fucking move on, Lemon!’
The shouts from the roadway were growing, an ugly unrest uncowed by the lowering spears of the roadside guards. The guards themselves had begun a slow withdrawal, steady backward footsteps moving them up the hill and back to the fortress.
Chel peered through the heat haze, over the surly crowd. ‘What’s going on back there?’
The cries were mounting, the displeased shouts of those overtaken by the wagon now overlaid with cries of rising alarm. Movement drew his eye through the wobbling air, a torrent of rising dust from beyond the dip of the mountain road. Something was coming.
‘Cub! Move your arse!’
The others aboard, Chel pulled himself up into the wagon. It started forward without delay, as another pair of guards jogged beside it then hauled themselves up alongside him. One of them had a moustache.
As the wagon pulled away into the cool darkness beneath the fortress, Chel heard the rumble of the outer gate beginning to close.